Darn birds
 

A friend of my boy was hunting in the last couple days, the Iowa antlerless rifle season. He shot a mature doe and a doe fawn. After walking back to the cabin for the four wheeler and returning (this took about an hour) he found the fawn had been mostly eaten by birds. He knew this from the tracks. The bowels were spread across the snow and there was not enough meat left to salvage. They did not touch the larger deer.

I think that it was probably bald eagles but I suppose it could have been vultures. He did not see anything.

What say you? Have any of you had anything like this happen?

What ever they were, they worked fast.

probably buzzards. ive sen them eat the guts out of a calf while it was still alive

I would agree, but I haven't seen a turkey vulture for a while. I think they are more of a summer bird here in Iowa.

Bald eagles are a lot bigger and stronger. I have seen about ten of them this winter.

Well come on down to Arkansas there plenty of buzzards here.

I would have guessed coyotes combined with birds of some kind. That is mighty quick for just birds to have eat a deer.

I walked past a gutpile my father-in-law left once, and came back 2 hours later and all you could see was the stomach contents and a red spot in the grass. Pretty wild. Looked like someone had cleaned off the bottom of a lawnmower and sprayed red paint on the ground.

Nature at its finest....

If grggrn doesn't have enough come on down we have plenty.I cleaned a deer a few years ago and when I turned around and it looked like a scene from the "Birds".The trees where covered with buzzards just waiting for me to leave. Kind of spooky.

i have never had birds do that, but coyotes yes

bein that it was a fawn..certainly possible..maybe the yotes were there before the birds to help..never know. i know 30 vultures can eat the gut pile of 4 deer in an hour.

By and large turkey vultures are a migratory bird. You might see them in the south, but in the northern states they are pretty much gone till spring. Being that this hunt was in Iowa, the culprit mostly likely was not a turkey vulture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tu...lturerange.jpg

Pterodactyls??

It was not coyotes, the snow made it so Jordan knew it was birds, big birds. I have talked with my boy again an he said it was an hour and fifteen minutes, but that is still fast.

My son said that Jordan told him that the fawn was really torn up and all over the place. He said that on the snow it was a pretty gruesome sight. The bowels themselves were not eaten but much of the rest was gone.

The only tracks were his own, the deer's and the birds.

It just about had to be eagles but I am amazed that he did not see anything, just the aftermath.

I will quiz Jordan when I see him and update this.

we have had ravens eat our kills rite off the buck poll in michigans upper peninsula, they can eat most of a small deer in a couple hours.